I’m not sure if it’s my advancing age, my approaching senility or just my natural orneriness, but I am puzzled and somewhat disturbed about an awful lot going on now in the public arena.

David Brooks, writing in the N.Y. Times, expresses it a lot more eloquently: “We haven’t entered the age of milquetoast bourgeois relativism. Instead, society has become a free-form demolition derby of moral confrontation: the cold-eyed fanaticism of students at Middlebury College and other campuses nationwide; the rage of the alt-right; holy wars over transgender bathrooms; the furious intensity at every town-hall meeting on every subject.”

In no particular order, my troubling concerns are over: sanctuary cities, ICE calling themselves police, the Freedom Caucus, as well as all this intense scrutiny of the Trump camp interaction with Russian officials and hacking of Trump Towers.

Sanctuary Cities – States – College Campuses

Either we are a nation of laws or we’re not. You can’t just decide to abide by some laws and not others.

The sanctuary cities say “if you get a warrant, we’ll hold the illegals for ICE.” A warrant, although it serves the same purpose, is a time-consuming, drawn-out practice compared to a detainer request.

If you don’t like a particular law, get together and campaign for a change. Declaring your opposition to any law by government officials who have sworn to uphold the constitution is ludicrous.

Until the law is changed, I believe any means available, including denial of funding, should be employed to remind people that laws have been enacted to be implemented.

Anything less will lead to the “decline and fall of the U.S. Empire,” just like the one in Rome.

ICE – Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Apparently the ICE agents sometimes, or maybe always, identify themselves as “police” when knocking on a door. A number of people object to that practice.

It would certainly be a mouthful if the ICE agents announced themselves as “Immigration and Customs Enforcement.” They could just say ICE, but that’s kinda cold.

I thought all law enforcement agents are “police.” How does the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms identify themselves?

Just not sure it matters very much but the open borders crowd uses any excuse to discredit immigration laws.

Freedom Caucus

Like its Tea Party predecessor, it is an enigma that destroys the whole legislative process. If it continues its totally inflexible, unbendable positions in Congress, it may also destroy the Republican Party.

The elephant party proclaimed its intent to repeal Obamacare for eight years because it was a very flawed financial disaster waiting to happen. They could never draft a replacement bill because of the intransigence of the Freedom Caucus.

These were the most vociferous opponents of Obamacare. What did they win? Nothing! Not supporting the Ryan Plan was self-defeating.

And their inability to accept the basic principal of legislative action, i.e., the need to compromise in order to achieve any results. Their unwillingness to alter their “principals” was totally self-defeating. We still have Obamacare and the $300 billion per year deficit it creates.

Hacking Trump Towers

There were enough leaks to suspect that there probably was some hacking at Trump Towers during the transition. It clearly was not Obama who would have had to get a warrant from the FISA Court and didn’t.

The tweeting from Trump was ill-advised and blatantly false. That doesn’t mean some outside party did not hack into the phones at Trump’s offices.

The Russian-Trump Connections

What’s all this fuss about? Let’s start with some facts:

The Russians interfered in our election by hacking into Clinton campaign officials’ emails, and we may all be surprised if we learn the RNC and the Trump campaign were hacked as well.

There is no evidence that the Russian activities interfered in any way with the actual voting process.

Our CIA, as well as the Russians, have meddled in the election of numerous other countries for years.

Now to all the brouhaha with congressional investigations of the Russian-Trump connections. If Trump officials during the campaign or the transition had conversations with Russian officials, who cares? Why is this important? If they gave away military or strategic secrets, that surely should be looked into.

Anything else, however, seems to be a complete waste of time and effort. So let’s move on to getting some things done.

President Trump has a boatload of counselors and advisors available to offer advice and counsel on a great variety of issues and problems. In this day and age, I believe he ought to add one more—a Twitter editor. We’d all benefit